


Champion of the Earth and the Sky

by dramatorama



Series: The Rooftop Club [1]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Community: areyougame, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-13 19:48:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4535049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dramatorama/pseuds/dramatorama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You know,” she says, “you are way too good at skulking around on rooftops for someone who isn't a ninja."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Champion of the Earth and the Sky

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Final Fantasy VII, Yuffie/Vincent: Secret Societies - What does this mean? Approached at a strange and oblique angle. I need a beta~!

The bar is noisy tonight. It's Cloud's birthday, and by some miracle most of AVALANCHE has made it to Edge for a night of drinks, cake, and (in Yuffie's opinion) the popular party game called Joke About Yuffie's Kleptomania. It's _not_ funny: she's an adult in the eyes of the law, and could do with a goddamn break, or at least a rest from Barrett's teasing. At least until the heat from her last job dies down.

When Yuffie spots her target after a couple of Tifa's least vomitous beers, she secures the six inches of space next to him by hauling a sleepy kid up by the collar. “It's hours past your bedtime, squirt. If Tifa notices you're still up, there'll be no candy for a week.” Marlene starts to complain, then eyes Tifa's back where she's crouched down talking to Nanaki, and wisely reconsiders.

Mission half accomplished, Yuffie elbows Cid into giving up his seat for her. He grouches his way over to where Barrett and Cloud are engaged in a complex card game involving four decks, a stack of poker chips, and six materia each. Her fingers twitch out of habit, but there are other things on her mind. Vincent, left alone with her and his glass of wine, doesn't seem too bothered at all. She files that observation away for later consideration in private.

Yuffie relaxes a little, then considers leaving the room and re-entering with a dramatic flourish and possibly a cape. Instead, she fingers the edge of Vincent's – how _is_ it that it's lasted this long, with fire and demons and the rest? - until he gives her a Look and a grunt, as she expected. She dances away sideways. This is a good sign; Cid would have swung for her by now.

They sit companionably for a while before her mouth, as always, runs away with her. “I, uh. Don't suppose you still have that big old materia thingy. Protomateria.” She's going to place the blame for that one squarely on Tifa's beer. He doesn't look at her; instead, his left hand reaches unconsciously to his breastbone, fingertips digging in hard, before he realises what he's doing and stops, stares into space. He looks too vulnerable, and his arms are unusually bare. She herself traded wearing armour for bravado some years back, but her heart breaks a little anyway to see him looking so human.

She squints at him sideways, studying him. She's glad, suddenly, that this is a lock-in, that she stayed in tonight for Cloud's stupid birthday rather than going out and causing trouble. She hadn't been expecting Vincent to turn up at all, and the thought of him sitting without her in Seventh Heaven - which is usually full of the prettiest girls in the WRO on a Saturday night - makes her feel a little jealous, just for a moment.

When she traces one finger up his arm before realising quite what she's doing, the natural end is at the long, puckered line crossing the soft inside of his elbow. The flinch would be imperceptible if she weren't touching him: one hard, sharp jerk of the muscles in his arm and then a long, slow release of breath. She doesn't think anyone else has noticed. He's staring hard at something on the opposite wall, a framed photograph of the latest batch of Turks – Reeve's Turks - standing at the bar and raising their glasses in a toast. Some joker – probably Barrett – has drawn crude circles and lines on the glass with a thick black marker, and now it's a makeshift dartboard with the centre focused on a man with a beard and a gaunt, lined face.

She hadn't planned on asking about it, but the words come from him half-absently, as if he's dreaming. “We all had a mark in those days. Some of the older ones still do.” He reaches for his glass, and nearly knocks it over before he gulps the last of his wine, wincing. Clutching the stem with both hands, he continues, “Reno, Tseng. Don't know about Elena. The Legend grew a beard to cover his.”

Yuffie stares at him, confused. She sometimes forgets who he is, _why_ he is; he's so wrapped up in being the strangest guy around that it's easy enough. Did he have friends once? Did they sit around bullshitting in bars? -she wonders, but keeps her trap shut this time.

Fingers still wound around his wine glass, Vincent tilts it back and forth in circles like a gyroscope. “I had a partner back then. Veld. When he got married, had a kid, I was sent to Nibelheim and he stayed in the Midgar office. He was the strategist, and I was the grunt. He used to tell me where to point my gun.” He has a weird, sardonic smile, his mouth half-twisted. Yuffie thinks this is the most she's ever heard Vincent say in one go since Meteorfall. She doesn't want to break the spell, even if it's probably an evil one, so she just nods and sips her beer, tries to look like a brick wall so he'll feel at home.

“You met him while we were evacuating Midgar.” This confuses her, she racks her brain – the only unknowns she remembers are WRO guys in full firefighting gear. How could she have told a Turk from anybody else in that get-up? She'd thought all the Turks were in their stupid suits that day; she remembers Elena, tiny and fierce, pistol-whipping a guy trying to haul her out of the van she was driving.

Oh. _Oh._ She remembers a man who was sitting in the back with the civilians, grimly dignified. An old guy. The guy in the photograph. Reeve has, wisely or unwisely, kept her well away from Shinra people in her work, so she doesn't know much more. But he was old, _old._ She clears her throat nervously. “You mean the guy with the scars?”

Vincent's mouth tightens. “We all had scars.” His sleeve is rolled above his elbow. He pushes it up a little higher, and she sees that his upper arm is a terrible mess of pink and white, the flesh sunken and withered. “His daughter has them too.” He jerks his head up at the picture. Next to the man who Yuffie knows now as Veld, there is a woman with a fixed stare, arms hanging loosely by her side. One of her hands is not a hand at all but a lump of flesh, as if she'd held it in a fire.

Yuffie shivers. Her curiosity has overtaken her, and she guesses this is the price: crawling through basements and spooky attics after other people's ghosts. She downs the last of her drink, and makes it her excuse for leaving him alone.

 

 

 

Later, she engineers an accidental rendezvous by clambering out from her room through the skylight onto the roof. He is predictably perched at the edge. He _has_ to know that it makes a cool silhouette. Why else would he keep posing like that?

“You know,” she says, “you are _way_ too good at skulking around on rooftops for someone who isn't a ninja.”

“Officially, at least.” His slight smile is entirely unexpected; she feels like she's been given a present, and shrugs it off accordingly.

“I guess a Turk is the next best thing. The guns count against you, though. Too _loud_ , jerkface-” He's still smiling. She's not sure if he's humouring her or not, but just in case, she carries on: “-besides, you saved the world. That's not very ninja-like, all those heroics."

“And the White Rose of Wutai only saves the world in secret, during the commercial breaks.”

She punches him in the shoulder, which only makes her knuckles sting. “ _Jerk._ Those TV ninjas are nowhere near as cool as me.”

“I suppose they have the advantage of being professionals.”

She bares her teeth at him. “You know, we have a guild and everything. It's all top secret. I shouldn't even be telling you this, except you're such a loud clanky jerk that you'd never find us.”

He silently raises his bare hands, as if to ward her off. “I thought that ninjas were meant to work in secret. How do you know who's a member?”

“We have our ways.” She smiles mysteriously, which doesn't seem to impress him _at all,_ and before she knows she's doing it, she's crouched over him, one of her daggers poised at his throat.

“Amateur, huh?” He doesn't reply, just glances slightly to his right. To her chagrin, he's managed to draw on her. She rocks back on her heels and leans away from the barrel to sheathe her weapon in her boot. “Like I said. Guns are cheating.” She crosses her arms, defiant.

He shrugs and puts the shotgun down. “It isn't loaded, but I think I've made my point.” Then he does something so completely un-Vincent that it makes her dizzy. He leans back on both hands, and smiles again. “I think it's been years since I carried it around like that, without loading it.” He looks so carefree in that moment, so unlike himself.

She cocks an eyebrow. “You sure it's safe to do that? What would Veld say?”

“Most people would ask if it was safe to carry a loaded gun.”

“We aren't most people.” She summons up her last raggedy scrap of courage. “In Wutai, you'd have lost that hand for raising it to the Fifth Mighty God. You owe me now, _sucker_.” She sets her jaw and looms over him to make her point.

He raises an eyebrow back at her, and then leans forward again. One of his hands comes to rest on her hip, the other on her back. She swallows involuntarily, suddenly full of adrenaline. This was always the plan, but in another very real sense this was _never_ the plan. She doesn't know whether to go with it, or run, or just freeze and hope for the ground to open up and swallow her.

Yuffie squeezes her eyes shut tightly, prays to Leviathan that this will not be happening when she opens them. She cracks one eye open to see Vincent drawing back from her, lowering his head. His hair hides his face and his hands fall from her, one towards his gun and one towards the holster on his leg, making ready to sheathe it and to leave her there.

In one gut-churning instant, she knows what she wants. She grabs his wrist. He shakes her off and reaches for the gun again. “Vincent, stop. _Vince-_ ” - in his slight pause she takes his hands in hers, drags them back to her hips, and they feel so good there- “-where do you think you're going?” He looks back at her, unreadable.

She leans in, because this might be her _one and only_ chance, and would the greatest ninja who's ever lived chicken out of this? She doesn't think so. To her eternal gratitude, he brings her back toward him, one hand moving to her shoulder in slow circles. The kiss starts out shy, tentative. She leans back slightly and her palms and knees scrape against dry tar and gravel. When he pulls away again she blinks, dazed for a moment; taking stock, she realizes that she is on a rooftop in the middle of the night, kissing Vincent, and she probably isn't dreaming.

He runs his hands up from her hips, fingertips skimming under the hem of her shirt. Without really thinking about what she's doing, she ducks her head and lifts her arms so he can pull it off altogether. He rests his head on her bare shoulder and stays there for a minute, curling a hand back and forth at the nape of her neck. It tickles. She doesn't mind that so much, but his fingertips are brushing the edges of the secret scar that no one but her master has ever seen. She could still feel it now, and she does: the twist and flick of a sharp, sharp knife on her bare back in a tiny, sinuous line, the blood running down her spine; and biting her lips because she is fourteen and a shinobi and she must not make a sound.

“It's like a snake,” Vincent says quietly, “or a wave.”

She feels like the dying swan in a ballet, all angles, skinny ribs and bare limbs, which probably doesn't suit her. He, though, looks like he's carved from the dark and the moonlight. He kisses her in the hollow place above her collarbone, and she shivers, her eyes half-closed. It still doesn't seem entirely real, despite how warm he is, how _there_ he is with her. She pinches his earlobe.

He looks up at her with a look of such pure annoyance that she collapses into helpless laughter. She slides away from him, clutching her stomach. “S-sorry. _God._ I just-” She can't even sit up, so she settles for sprawling across the asphalt. “I had to check you were alive...” When she was a child, these whims got her into _so_ much trouble. She'd always resolved to grow out of them. It might have been easier if it wasn't always worth it.

This time, though? She's not sure. Vincent hasn't run away, but he's sitting the same way he always sits, passive, implacable. The spark that had flared in his eyes is a dull ember. Soon the weight of the night and the silence will put it out. She gathers her sprawling arms and legs and insinuates herself next to him, under his cloak, an arm around his waist. “Sometimes I just do these things.” she says, sounding apologetic even to herself. It's embarrassing, the way these kinds of things creep up on her. “Don't hold it against me.” He looks at her properly, a look that might be forgiveness, and she squeezes him tightly as she gets up - in what might, from someone else, be a hug. Her version has elbows in it.

She leans down for the last time, kisses him once on each cheek and once sloppily on the mouth. “Good _night,_ Vincent.” She takes the long way back to her room, via two neighbours' fire escapes and a six-foot leap to the windowsill, bare-chested and waving her shirt from one hand like a flag.


End file.
